Chapter Text
The girl took a hoarse, staggered breath, coughed again, and crashed against the wall to her left. Her shoulder, already weak, felt like it would break from the force. One of her knees was weaker than the other, and she slid down the wall and collapsed into a pile a moment later. The floor tiles were cold as ice against her naked skin, and their black-and-white colors were slowly stained pink by the blood trickling from her thighs and her waist.
A familiar feeling welled up in her throat; she knew another fit of coughing was coming. With great effort, she brought a bandaged hand up to her lips. Her body shook as she hacked up more blood and spit, but she could barely hear a sound.
Anything beyond the reach of her hands was a haze. She was definitely in a building, but it was so dark. Whether that was because the lights were dim or because her vision was weak, she couldn’t say. There might have been another wall across from her, but it was too hard to make it out.
Her breasts and hips were covered in bandages, as were various parts of her hands and arms, but the rest of her body was naked. She could tell that they were once white, but had mostly turned either pink or gray with blood or grime. They could have been days old. Between the bandages were countless lumps and bruises; entire portions of her body were just masses of red bumps. All of them hurt, but some were much worse than others. From the skin between the bruises, she guessed she must be very pale.
Her mouth filled with either blood or saliva, or a combination of both, and she managed to swallow. The liquidy mass went down painfully. She rolled her eyes and saw, for the first time, the tresses of unwashed black hair around her shoulders. Her head throbbed, as if some object were being swung inside of it. She groaned, though barely, and tried to concentrate.
Where am I…? she wondered.
She looked around, forcing her eyes to focus. Yes, she decided, it wasn’t just her: the lights here were very dim.
She was in a hallway, a very large one. Dozens of people could have comfortably passed each other here, though no one else was around right now. There were no windows, but there were two thick wooden doors across from her. Next to each was a plaque: 1-A and 1-B.
To her right, the hallway met a metal gate. To her left, it extended past a corner she couldn’t see around. She grunted weakly, then looked back to the gate. It was closed and locked… and yet, it felt to her as if she’d come from that direction. Hadn’t she?
She frowned, massaging one especially painful bruise on her shin. Her thoughts were jumbled, and when she concentrated, all that came to her was a sallow, useless blur.
Her heart leapt out of her chest. She was still shaking, but now it was from fear. With a start, she realized:
I remember nothing.
She could not recall a second of her life before leaning against this wall. She could not remember what this place was. She couldn’t even think of her own name or her face. She reached up and pressed her fingers around her nose, searching for some distinguishing characteristic that would remind me of who she was, or at least what she looked like. But there was nothing.
She turned suddenly to her left. Barely, she’d heard a sound. She closed her eyes. Her ears weren’t as injured as the rest of her body, and it might be possible to hear more.
“… unacceptable!” It was a boy. He was screaming, but he didn’t seem scared. This was more like anger or indignation. “Surely you were aware…”
The girl coughed again, and lost trace of the boy’s voice. But she knew he wasn’t far. She bit the inside of her cheek, and gingerly forced herself to her feet. Without shoes, the floor was cold and harsh. Her ankles almost gave out under her own weight, but she somehow kept upright. She steadied herself against the white wall, coating it in a thin streak of pink, and then lurched forward.
She still couldn’t stand up straight, and when she moved forward, it felt as if she was really just falling horizontally. Now that she was wobbling forward, she knew that she wouldn’t be able to stop herself without completely slumping to the ground again. If she fell, she wouldn’t be able to get back up.
“… unspeakable! I must report you!” cried the boy.
“Everyone just calm down!” This voice was a girl’s. She was trying to sound diplomatic. “Listen, why don’t we all go around and introduce ourselves?”
There were more voices, eleven or twelve of them, and then a heated argument. The girl lost track of what they were saying.
She stumbled to the other side of the hallway, and then rounded the corner. She could see an enormous door of red velvet. She would have paused to examine it more, even aching as she was, but her legs kept moving on their own. All she could tell of it at a glance was that it looked nothing like the rest of the architecture here.
The girl pressed forward. To her left was another door, this one made of yellow metal. Next to it was a plaque that read A/V Room.
Sweat dribbled across her eyebrows, then off the tip of her nose. She needed to rest. She needed to sit down somewhere. Could she yell out and get the others’ attention? But she knew she couldn’t. Her throat was much too sore.
The hallway opened up into a square chamber. A pillar in the center was surrounded by benches. To her right, a door with a plaque that read School Store. Forward, the hallway continued to parts unknown. To her left…
A large pair of double doors. One was slightly ajar. Through it, she could see shadows moving. What sounded like five different conversations were all going on at the same time.
“Where are we?”
“My name’s Asahina!”
“This is all some kind of weird orientation thing.”
The girl collided hard with the wall next to the doors, but the din of the people inside kept them from noticing. To her surprise, she actually kept her footing by leaning against the wall.
She breathed hard for a bit, listening to the others in the next room.
“You think maybe someone grabbed us and hauled us off and we’re not actually at school?” asked an unfamiliar boy.
“I’m sure that’s it!” said another boy. This one sounded older, though.
The girl inched forward. Carefully, she snuck a peek through the open door. From this vantage, she could see only an unfriendly, cruel-looking girl in a dark school uniform. Hair the same color as the uniform fell in two long braids past her shoulders, and a pair of thin-rimmed glasses covered almost half of her face. This girl hunched slightly, as if uncomfortable in the presence of so many others, and looked back and forth between them while biting on the back of her thumb.
“Ah!” she cried. She looked to the doors suddenly, jumped back, and pointed. “O—over there! There’s someone there!”
The conversations died instantly. The girl in the hallway tried to move back, but she wasn’t fast enough. There was a flurry of steps, and then the door she’d been peeking into flew open. A bright light exploded out of the classroom, and framed a monstrous silhouette: a man with muscles the size of a normal person’s entire body, and long, white hair past his waist.
His body twisted into a fighter’s stance, and his thick arms pulled up to his chin and chest. He could probably have killed the girl with one punch.
The girl gasped and stumbled backwards, losing her balance. A moment later, she was on her back.
“Oh!” The man lowered his arms. With a deep, rumbling voice, he started to speak. “I—”
The girl tried to scream, but she only fell into another fit of coughing. In-between the coughs, she scrambled backwards on the floor, scraping her elbows. Parts of the bandages started to come undone.
Another person exited the room, this one a boy in a white uniform. He wasn’t nearly as large, but his eyes were red and wild, and there was an aura to him that seemed to scream even when his mouth was shut.
“What is—” he started.
The girl twisted, still trying to get away. Another figure came out, and then another. All of them started talking over each other, then screaming.
“Woah!” cried a boy’s voice. “She’s scared!”
He moved out of the crowd, then put up a hand behind himself in a stopping motion. He didn’t approach the girl, though.
He was very short for a boy, shorter even than most of the girls. His hair was a mess of brown spikes, each of them catching the ceiling lights in a slightly different way, and he wore an ugly, too-big jacket of black, brown, and red. A hoodie the size of his entire chest fell behind his head. He was awkward for sure, and seemed almost comical, but there was something about him, about the way he stood or looked down on the girl, that made it impossible to doubt his sincerity.
He smiled nervously, then held out a hand to her. The girl’s heart was beating fast.
“Hello,” he said gently. “My name’s Makoto.”
The others in the room melted away. For a long while, nothing existed except that hand.
Sweat trickled down around the girl’s nose and eventually onto her tongue. She realized she was biting her lip. She’d stopped moving backward without meaning to. Slowly, she reached up and took Makoto’s hand.
“She’s so hurt!” cried a friendly-looking girl. She was tan, had big blue eyes, and wore a red tracksuit. She moved to help, but stopped at Makoto’s hand.
“She’s covered in bandages…” said a boy. He looked slightly older than the others, and his hair struck out as dreadlocks in long points.
“N—nice observation, idiot.” said the dour-looking girl from before. Her face was blue, and she turned away when her eyes passed near the trickles of blood; she was clearly trying not to look at them directly. “Next you’ll notice that she’s practically naked.”
With Makoto’s help, the bandaged girl reached her feet. She was still unsteady, and part of her knee was still bleeding, so he lifted one of arms over his shoulder and helped her to the bench by the pillar.
She looked to the others crowded around her. No longer cowering in fear, she could see that the man from before was actually another teenage girl, although an enormous one. She was even wearing a skirt as a school uniform. She was obviously aware of how badly she’d intimidated the girl, and so she hung in the back, arms crossed.
The tallest of the boys, a blond in a black uniform that almost looked like a business suit, also crossed his arms. He cocked his head as he looked her over.
“That makes fifteen of us.” he stated, somewhat disinterestedly.
“You sound so cold!” said the tan girl. She kneeled down by the bench and took the girl’s hand. Some of the bandages were fraying off. “Are you okay? My name’s Aoi Asahina, but you can call me Hina.”
The girl nodded. She looked back to Makoto. She opened her mouth, and mercifully, almost to her own surprise, she didn’t start coughing. When she spoke, her words came out in a gravelly, quiet tone.
“I’m okay.” she said. “I’m… hurt, though.”
Sakura, who seemed much less frightening now, examined her wounds from afar.
“You are hurt,” she agreed. “I’ve seen many wounds like these, though never so many at once. I think… I think none of them are lethal, though.”
“How’s that?” Yasuhiro laughed. “Makoto, looks like you aren’t the only lucky student here, eh?”
“Oh, shut up!” Hina snapped at him. She looked up, eyes overflowing with warmth. “Are you alright?”
“… No.” the girl squeaked out, still looking up at Makoto. She wondered if she was blushing. She wondered if the blush would show underneath the bruises. “I don’t know where I am.”
The boy with the dreadlocks laughed. “Then welcome to the club! None of us know what the hell’s going on, either!”
One by one, everyone else announced his or her name: Chihiro, Toko, Hifumi, Celestia, Taka, Leon, Sakura, Mondo, Sayaka, Yasuhiro, and Byakuya. The last to speak was the pale, lavender-haired girl in the back. She said two words, “Kyoko Kirigiri,” and then fell silent again. If she had any sympathy for the girl, she didn’t show it. Instead, she propped her chin on a gloved hand and studied the bandages and bruises on the girl.
“What’s your name?” Makoto asked.
The girl scowled. She looked down at her lap, then shook her head.
“I… don’t know,” she admitted. “I can’t remember anything, except wandering through the halls.”
She looked up to the others. Most looked alarmed, though the girl with lavender hair seemed even more interested than before.
“Memory loss…” she repeated. Her eyes were ablaze, though it was hard to tell with what.
“Everyone’s… a student?” asked the girl.
“Yeah,” said Sayaka. “This is Hope’s Peak Academy!”
“At least we think it is,” Leon muttered.
“This is the school for Ultimates!” announced Taka. “I am the Ultimate Moral Compass, and for that reason, I must apologize for scaring you earlier!”
For some reason, he screamed both sentences. It was easy to see that this boy had no concept of an indoor voice.
Again, almost everyone told her their Ultimate Talent: baseball player, idol, martial artist, and so on. Byakuya said nothing, but Makoto explained that he was the Ultimate Affluent Progeny. Only the quiet girl with the gloves said nothing.
“She’s the same age as the rest of us,” Hifumi said. “She must be a student, too!” He leered in closer, studying her. For some reason, it was much more uncomfortable when he did it. “A cute, freckled girl wandering the halls, naked and covered in bandages? This is more the realm of 2D than 3D!”
“Gross!” screamed Hina, and she pushed his face back. She looked at her hand, grimaced, and rubbed what might have been drool onto the bench.
I have freckles? The girl automatically touched her face.
“I don’t suppose you remember your talent?” Makoto asked, smiling.
“I don’t know… I don’t even know if I’m supposed to be here.” she said.
“Very toned…” Sakura mumbled. “Good musculature. Probably an athlete.”
The girl looked down. For the first time, she realized that she actually was very athletic. Her chest was obviously toned even underneath her bruises, and the parts of her arms that weren’t covered in red welts looked as strong as Hina’s, the Ultimate Swimmer’s. With a surprising amount of pride, she realized that a weaker girl could not have made it to these doors with all of these wounds.
“M—maybe…” Toko said. “She’s still weird, though.”
Toko wore a long skirt down to her ankles. As she said this, she started scratching absently at her right thigh.
“So, she probably doesn’t know why we’re trapped.” Chihiro said, clearly disheartened.
“We’re not trapped!” exclaimed the carefree Yasuhiro. “It’s just some weird orientation.”
The bandaged girl frowned, but said nothing.
“Let me explain!” Hina smiled. She stood up suddenly, then grabbed the girl’s hand. “You’re all bloody right now. There’s a nurse’s office right over there; I passed it when I woke up. I’ll help you get cleaned up, and I’ll explain everything along the way.”
The girl looked back at the others. Byakuya, Kyoko, and Celestia regarded her coolly, and Yasuhiro seemed not to realize… well, anything, but the others all looked concerned for her. There was no way to refuse Hina’s offer, and no reason to do so.
“O—okay.” she said.
DING DONG BING BONG
Everyone jumped up as the bell chimed through the halls, except Kyoko and Byakuya. Suddenly, the girl saw that there was a large, conspicuous television bolted to the ceiling, as well as an equally obtrusive camera. Its screen flashed to life, and a strange, black silhouette appeared over static.
“Ahem, ahem! Testing, test!” said a playful, high-pitched voice. The girl shuddered, though she wasn’t sure why. Something about the voice just filled her with dread. “Mike check, one two! This is a test of the school broadcast system! Am I on? Can everyone hear me? Okay, well then! To all incoming students: I would like to begin the entrance ceremony at… right now! Please make your way to the gymnasium at your earliest convenience! That’s all! I’ll be waiting.”
“Well then,” said Byakuya. “If you’ll excuse me.”
He was gone before the television even switched off.
The strangeness of the announcement and the gross mischief of the voice left almost everyone else with an obvious sense of unease. The only one who still looked comfortable was Yasuhiro.
“I’ll go ahead, too,” he said, totally unconcerned. “I’ll find the teacher or whatever and tell ‘em you and Hina are in the nurse’s office, don’t worry.”
He ran off a moment later.
“What a fool,” breathed Celestia. “A naked, half-dead girl wanders the halls alone, yet he thinks nothing is odd?”
Makoto grinned nervously and rubbed the back of his head. Rather than responding to them, he looked to the girls on the bench.
“Do you need any extra help?” he offered. “I don’t mind waiting.”
The girl looked up to Hina, then back to Makoto.
Suddenly, she felt acutely aware of her own weakness, of how small she felt and must seem to the others around her. She bit her lip.
“Makoto!” Hina frowned. “She needs to change these bandages, and you’re a boy.”
“Oh!” He scratched the back of his head, then nodded. “I guess that’s true. Alright, we’ll wait for you guys in the gym.”
Hina nodded, smiling. She placed an arm underneath the girl’s shoulder, then hefted her to her feet. Hina was doing more than half of the work to keep her on her feet.
Most of the students went off to the gym with a quick “goodbye” or “see you later.” Sakura in particular seemed to want to help, but she was still indecisive after the earlier scare. After a moment, she turned and left. Last of all was Kyoko, who hesitated for some time. She looked to the group, and then back to Hina and the girl. Her face was unreadable, but her eyes lingered on the bandages.
Without a word, she placed another arm underneath the girl’s other shoulder.
The nurse’s office was only a very short distance away; they were there in less than thirty seconds. Hina pushed open the doors with her foot, but Kyoko frowned again and paused. Silently, she examined the frame around the doors.
The girl followed her eyes until she found what was so interesting: there was something all around the doorframe. It was a transparent, slightly shiny substance, almost too faint to notice. There were five or six lines of it across the edges of the frame.
Kyoko pulled a hand away and touched it. A tiny bit of the substance came off, sticking to her glove.
“What is it?” the girl asked.
“Glue.” Kyoko answered. “Like… something was taped here not too long ago.”
Kyoko stayed behind to examine the door as Hina and the girl entered.
“Woah!”
It was like no other nurse’s office she had ever seen… Not that she could recall ever seeing one before. X-rays hung on the wall, advanced machines were everywhere, and another of those obvious, ugly security cameras was bolted onto the ceiling. The floor sparkled and shone, as if this was the first time anyone had ever set foot in the room.
“C’mon,” Hina said, and she set the girl on a bed – they were all equally clean.
-----
A few minutes passed. Hina pulled off the old bandages, cooed and tsked as she found more bruises underneath, and assured the girl that all of this would heal after a few days. As she applied new bandages, she chatted away, explaining that this was the first day of school, that everyone had passed out when they arrived, that the entrance hall was blocked by a giant metal vault, and that huge guns, which were probably fakes, hung from the ceiling.
When she pulled off the bandages on the girl’s right hand, she gasped.
“Oh my god!” she squealed. “What a cute dog!”
The girl looked down, startled. On her hand was a black-and-white tattoo of an eight-sided star. In its center was the head of a wolf baring its fangs. Underneath the wolf was a word: FENRIR.
She frowned, trying to conjure up some kind of memory… but nothing came.
“Is this your dog?” Hina asked pleasantly. “Oh! Wait, the memory thing. I’m sorry.”
My dog? The girl repeated the words in her mind. She rubbed a thumb against the tattoo, wondering if she had indeed had a wolf. If this was a school for Ultimates, could she be some kind of animal handler? She hoped not. Nothing about animals seemed very interesting to her.
Unlike the rest of her body covered by bandages, the hand seemed mostly fine. Hina didn’t bother covering it again. Instead, she rummaged through a medicine cabinet for a few seconds, then brought back a bottle of pills.
“Here!” she said cheerfully, and handed out three pills without reading the label. “These should dull any pain.” Kyoko reentered, but Hina continued on. “You stay here, and we’ll go to the gym and get a teacher.”
“She should come with us,” Kyoko said blankly. She kneeled and started examining the floor. If she found something interesting, no one else could see it. “I doubt there will be anyone who can help her there.”
“I agree that it’s all scary,” Hina said. “But that doesn’t mean there’s anything, I don’t know, sinister happening here!”
The girl ate the pills. Instantly, most of the pain subsided. She nodded.
“I’ll go.”
Hina frowned, but didn’t fight her. Instead, she pulled off her red track jacket and placed it around the girl’s shoulders. It actually did offer some modesty.
“Thanks,” the girl said.
Kyoko stood and checked the girl for a moment. Her eyes darted to the tattoo, and the girl could see her asking questions about it within her own mind. Without another word, she left.
“Hmph!” Hina pursed her lips. “Jerk.”
Parts of her body were still in pain, but the girl felt much better now. She could walk without too much effort, though she was still covered in sweat, and any blood was either wiped away or covered by bandages. She didn’t even need to steady herself against the walls as she walked to the gym. Hina hovered beside her; her arms hung at her own sides, but she was clearly waiting to catch the girl if she stumbled.
To their mutual surprise, that didn’t happen. The hallway fed into the gym, and they found Kyoko there, just opening the door. Through it, they could see—
BOOM
The walls shook. Bits of plaster fell from the ceiling, breaking apart wherever they struck skin.
“Wh—”
The explosion came from the gym. Without a moment’s hesitation, Kyoko rushed inside. Hina paused, torn between seeing what was happening and attending to her friend, but eventually chose the latter.
“Come on!” she cried.
They rushed to the double doors to the gym and looked inside. The choking smell of gunpowder washed over them. The girl gasped slightly; this smell felt more familiar than the idea of dogs. It swept into her nose and her mouth, stinging her nostrils and sinking into her tongue.
I know this smell, this taste.
Several people were screaming or running inside of the gym, too many to count, but the scene inside was clear: a large stage in the back was partly exploded. Bloody, gory chunks of a human body were smeared across the otherwise immaculate wooden floor. Tatters of clothing were scattered everywhere, half on fire and the rest charred to black. It was impossible to guess who this had once been.
Yasuhiro screamed the loudest. Throwing up his arms, he fell backward, covered his eyes, and curled up into a ball. Toko was completely unconscious. Chihiro was silent, but obviously in shock. She simply stood in awe of what had momentarily before been her friend, mouth agape. Almost everyone else was the same, save Byakuya and Kyoko.
Hina’s throat welled up. She seemed ready to barf.
Nearest to the stage was Makoto. It was hard to guess if he’d been knocked back by the explosion or if he’d lost his footing from the shock, but either way, he was on his back, shaking and sputtering. His face was covered in soot and blood.
God… thought the girl.
Her heart was racing. Minutes before, Makoto had come to her aid and offered a hand… yet she could only shy back behind the door to the gym, barely poking her head to see inside. She wanted to help someone, or at least Makoto, but she just couldn’t.
She hated herself.
While everyone rolled or covered their faces or cried, the girl counted through everyone she could see.
Byakuya… Taka… Sakura…
The only student she couldn’t find was Mondo. She swallowed hard. Then the streaks of blood and gore…
But how did he explode? she wondered.
“‘But how did he explode?!’” cried a familiar playful voice. “I bet that’s what three of you are wondering right now!”
The students’ screams died out instantly, but the air was just as panicked. A strange black-and-white creature dropped from the ceiling and landed without a sound in the center of what had once been the Ultimate Biker Gang Leader. It was a plush teddy bear with an elongated red left eye. It was obviously a robot, but everything about its design was just a little wrong somehow. Just looking at made her stomach turn. Instinctively, her lips pulled back just at the sight of it.
“Heehee!” It rubbed its stomach. It seemed about to say something, then cocked its head. “We have three tardy students! Well, I’ll let it go with a warning just this once. Your classmates can fill you in on what you missed later.”
“You just killed Mondo!” Makoto screamed. “Why?!”
The bear let loose another high-pitched laugh. Then it flipped backward into the air and landed deftly on the stage.
“I guess that does technically count as ‘later,’ but I meant… Well, whatever. There’s a punishment for breaking school regulations, and your dear stupid, stupid friend laid hands on the headmaster. Tsk-tsk!”
The bear rubbed it stomach again and laughed hysterically, as if this was the funniest thing in the world. Then it stopped without warning. It wasn’t facing anyone in particular, but its red eye trained in the center between the three new arrivals in the back.
“If only someone had been here to warn poor Mondo to throw that other copy of me. It could have saved his life! In fact, I know it would have.”
Me…?
She bit her lip and looked to Hina, who was horrified, and Kyoko, who’d stopped halfway through the gymnasium. She knew instantly that that comment had been a taunt against Kyoko. In the corner of her eye, she could see Byakuya making the same deduction.
“Now then!” cried the bear. “To commemorate your entry into our school, I have a little present for all of you!”
Its hands disappeared behind its back, then, as if by magic, reappeared holding fourteen electronic pads in a pile.
“This is our official student handbook! Pretty cool, huh? It’s fully digital, so naturally we call it… the e-Handbook! Each one is personalized, and it’ll display your name when you start it up. Its space-age design makes it unbreakable, waterproof, fireproof, and able to withstand an impact force of up to ten tons! Most important of all, it contains all of our school regulations, so make sure you review them very thoroughly! Unlike Mondo.”
It paused. Half of its face was always smiling, but it seemed as if it would have frowned if it could have.
“You’ll hear me say this a lot,” it said emotionlessly. “But any more violations of the school rules will not be tolerated.” Then it laughed uproariously again. “That concludes our entrance ceremony! Please enjoy your abundantly dreary school life!”
A second later, it disappeared, seemingly melting into the wall behind the stage. All that was left of it were the fifteen e-Handbooks scattered where it had stood a moment before.
A long time passed before anyone said another word. The nauseous scents of gunpowder and charred flesh filled the air until they became stale.
At last, Byakuya walked to the stage, taking a circuitous route to avoid the blood on the floor, and pulled out one of the e-Handbooks. He turned it on, tossed it back, and picked up a new one. He did this six more times before turning the handbook off and slipping it into his pocket.
“Is there anyone here who’s seriously considering all this?” he asked. His voice wasn’t quite emotionless, but neither was it scared. It sounded almost like… a challenge. No one answered.
Considering what? she thought. She turned to Hina, whose eyes said that she was thinking the same thing.
After a while, the others began stirring. Enough time had passed that the pills had really worked over her body, and the girl found she could walk almost without issue. She moved over to Makoto, who was still on his back, and kneeled beside him. The action hurt her knees, but she didn’t mind. She opened up her mouth to speak, but a moment later, the blue-haired girl, Sayaka, joined her.
“Makoto,” interrupted Sayaka. “Are you okay?”
She’d asked the question just before the bandaged girl could. Makoto turned away. Tears were in his eyes. He didn’t answer.
The bandaged girl bit her lip, then pulled away. She watched the scene unfold: one-by-one, most of the students found their handbooks. Sakura helped Toko to her feet, and the latter girl thanked her by pushing her away and retreating to a corner of the gym. At no point did Toko ever again look directly at the bloody mess that had been Mondo. As soon as she was alone, she went back to vigorously scratching at her leg, even after someone else delivered her e-Handbook to her. Makoto was one the last students to get up, and Sayaka was by his side the entire time, whispering to him about something unknown.
The bandaged girl looked back to what had been Mondo. She’d barely known him, and he’d never said anything to her except his name and title. She knew that she ought to feel sympathy for him anyway, that she ought to cry at his sudden, inglorious death the way Makoto had. She tried to force herself to feel those sensations, to rage at this evil action.
She did manage to summon an emotion, but it wasn’t the one she intended. Within herself, she could feel a spark, a modicum of pure despair.
Please, not me…
Kyoko knelt by the blast area, tracing a finger around the edges of the soot and blood. The girl watched her for a while, but then a finger softly poked the back of her shoulder.
“Hey,” Hina said, awkwardly. “Only one handbook is left, so… I guess it must be yours.”
She held it out gently in her right hand. The girl bit her lip. Trembling, she picked it up and turned it over in her hands. For some reason, she had a terrible feeling of dread, as if pressing the button to turn it on would do more harm than good.
But that was silly. Everyone else had turned on theirs, and nothing had come from it. She steeled herself, swallowed hard, and watched its screen flicker to life:
MUKURO IKUSABA
FEMALE